Doctor Who’s 'Dot and Bubble' has people rooting for slugs

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the fifth episode of Series 14/Season One of Doctor Who, “Dot and Bubble”.

The BBC’s beloved sci-fi series Doctor Who usually has us fearful of the weird and menacing monsters the time-travelling alien has to face, but after the latest, Black Mirror-style episode “Dot and Bubble” aired on Saturday, viewers are perfectly fine with the slug-like creatures eating a load of people.

Branded a “Doctor-lite” episode due to it not having Ncuti Gatwa’s 15th Doctor as the protagonist (instead he appears in a number of short digital scenes alongside companion Ruby Sunday, played by Millie Gibson), the story follows a character named Lindy Pepper-Bean living on a futuristic word for rich 17 to 27-year-olds called Finetime.

And rather than talk to other people face-to-face, those living on the planet communicate via a digital interface or sphere (called a ‘bubble’) projected onto them by a small metal ball (called a ‘Dot’ - hence the title).

The description for the Russell T Davies episode reads: “The world of Finetime seems happy and harmonious. But an awful terror is preying on the citizens. Can the Doctor and Ruby make them see the truth before it’s too late?”

As “Dot and Bubble” goes on, we learn that the sluggish monsters have been created by the Dots who have “learned to hate” the people it has had to listen to for days on end.

We also discover that Lindy (played by Callie Cooke) and the rest of Finetime’s inhabitants are racist, with no Black people in sight on the planet, Lindy immediately blocking the Doctor when he tries to help her (but begrudgingly listening to Ruby when she reaches out), stating 15 “is not as stupid as he looks” and another character Brewster Cavendish warning not to be “contaminated” by him.

“Dot and Bubble” ends with the survivors boarding a boat and heading out to “fight” and “own” a distant place known as “The Great Beyond”, despite the Doctor warning them they’ll die and he can use his Tardis to transport them to a safe place instead.

And so with the Finetime residents shunning the Doctor’s offer of help and failing to see the bigger picture, viewers have taken to Twitter/X to joke that maybe the slugs were right to eat up the ignorant adolescents:

Doctor Who continues next Saturday with the sixth episode of the eight-part series, “Rogue”.

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